Apr 11, 2014
Doug Esser, The Associated Press

SEATTLE – CenturyLink says a seven-hour outage in Washington state 911 service early Thursday was caused by a technical error by a third-party vendor.

In a statement Friday, the company said the vendor worked with CenturyLink to resolve the issue “as quickly as possible.”

In one case early Thursday, an Everett, Wash., woman says she made 37 calls about an intruder breaking into her home and had to drive him away herself with a knife.

The company said a similar, shorter 911 outage about the same time in Oregon affected about 16,000 phone customers in Lincoln, Tillamook and Yamhill counties. CenturyLink says that was caused by a maintenance issue.